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Forecast Discussion:
Before we look our drying forecast, let's look at our drying land. Figure 1 is the long term drought analysis. We are now in moderate drought. The Western U.S. has the drier land, but it will be receiving rainfall/snowfall for the next month or more.
Figure 2 is the surface map for today, and it IS still dry here. And warming up.
The longer range forecast:
Our next front comes in Thursday PM into Friday AM, but precipitation amounts seem to be in the coating to a dusting level (Figure 3).
The GFS in Figure 4 doesn't give Longmont measurable snow through Friday PM. Earlier today, this model gave us 6-8 inches of snow through the next 10 days, but the 10 day forecast in Figure 5 is now under 1 inch. Similarly, the long range for the snow after the weekend on Figure 3 was in the 4-8 inch region, now it is small amounts of daily snow for a while. Obviously, the models don't have this system figured out yet.
The longer range European hints at 8-9 inches falling here by the end of the month, but we'll take that one storm at a time.
